Ward’s Bonanza.

The Collection That Our Academy of Science Wants.

A More Complete Description.

Our citizens were interested during the meeting of the National Teachers’ Association in the collection of casts belonging to Prof. H. A. Ward, of Rochester, N. Y. Our Academy of Science took special interest in the collection and is still ambitious to secure it. Prof. Ward is now at the Chicago Exposition, and The Tribune, of that city writes as follows of 

His Museum There.

Prof. H. A. Ward has brought from his Natural Science establishment at Rochester, N. Y., collections in the departments of mineralogy, geology, and zoology, the largest and choicest series which he has ever taken or sent out at any one time. It consists of three or four distinct cabinets arranged in glass cases, on shelves, against the walls and on the floor, over an area of 40x70 feet. Each of these cabinets, complete in itself, is labeled and arranged with he most systematic care and scientific accuracy. The cabinet of minerals is exceedingly choice, containing many splendid and showy groups and clusters of varieties of spars from England, Germany and this country; calcites of many kinds and colors; “Oriental alabaster” from Egypt; sulphur from Sicily, in splendid crystals; rock-crystals, amethysts, agates, onyx, jasper, and other gems; ores of iron, copper, lead, tin and zinc from Cornwall, Saxony, France and elsewhere. Asbestos, amianthers, flexible sandstone, from Brazil; a beautiful twelve-pound crystal of Iceland spar, showing finely the phenomenon of double refraction; obsidian, labradorite, and other species prized by mineralogists. There is also a series of precious gems, and a fac-simile of the “Welcome Nugget,” the largest lump of pure gold ever found, measuring two feet in length, weighing 180 pounds Troy, and worth (the original) $41,800. Another notable specimen is one of meteoric iron, which fell in Tollnea, Mexico, one side of which is polished and shows the Widman station figures characteristic of this iron of celestial origin. Crowning this cabinet is a huge beryl; a fine crystal about 20 inches long and 5 inches on a side – one of the very largest ever found. This mineral cabinet should be examined carefully for its scientific fullness, as well as for the showy beauty of individual specimens. 

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His Casts.

Distinct from his cabinet of actual fossils, but closely allied to it in character and appearance, is Mr. Ward’s series of casts of celebrated fossils. This department, in which Prof. W. stands unique in this country, and nearly so in the world, deserves especial attention. It is the result of an effort which has been completely successful, to represent in plaster fac-similies, carefully modeled and colored after nature, all the celebrated forms of ancient life which are the treasures of the British Museum, the Garden of Plants, and other royal museums of Europe. It forms a wonderful display to the common mind, and possesses intense interest for the student of Natural History. Here, arranged on shelves, hanging upon the walls, and standing upon separate pedestals, are the “Gorgons, monsters, and chimeras dire” which swam, crawled, walk, ran, and flew through the seas, rivers, and muddy wastes of our early planet. Collected, classified, and named by savants for a century past, these remains are the pride of European museums, and have been the base and ground-work of geological science. Mr. Ward has copied these just as they stood or lay, and has brought the entire series to our Exposition – some 800 specimens. Amid such wealth it is vain to enumerate, nor will space allow. The collection is led by

The Megatherium,

one of the most wonderful monsters which Nature ever fashioned. Eighteen feet long, it stands towering at one end of the series, resting upon its massive hind legs and tail, while its fore limbs are engaged in the branches of a tree which it is breaking off for its food. Nothing can exceed the graphic yet quaint appearance of this monster, and one can hardly trace its possible relation – which nevertheless it had – to the puny sloth of the present day. It was the king of vegetable feeders, as, indeed it was of all terrestrial animals which have ever walked on the glob, and forms the crowning piece of this great display. 

To one side of it is the glyptodon, a monster fossil armadillo, over ten feet long and covered with a coat of mail in impenetrable plates. He, like the megatherium, was exhumed on the Pampas of Buenos Ayres. Near by is a skull of the American mastodon and the great dinotherium; this latter a hippopotamus-shaped animal, having tusks curving down from the lower jaw, and legs ten feet high. This skull is four feet through, and perfectly preserved. Still larger, and near by, is the skull of the Himmalaya mammoth, with tusks twelve feet long. The colossochelys – an enormous tortoise also from the Himmalayas – stand near by. Its shell is fully five feet high and eight feet long, and the animal alive must have weighed nearly two tons. But we cannot go into further details in this interesting series.